Word of the Day | anecdote
The word anecdote has appeared in 283 New York Times articles in the past year, including on March 6 in “A Challenge to Make Science Crystal Clear” by Kenneth Chang:
What is a flame?
At 11, Alan Alda was fascinated by the colorful, translucent undulations of a burning flame.
So he asked his teacher, “What is a flame?”
“It’s oxidation,” she said.
The answer dumbfounded him. A flame is indeed oxidation, a type of chemical reaction that occurs when something burns. But the word did not capture why a flame burns orange or why it produces heat, or anything else that the young Mr. Alda really wanted to know about it.
“It’s just giving it another name,” he said by telephone last week. “It’s like saying, ‘Well, a flame is Fred.’ And that really doesn’t get you anywhere.”
… The old question about the flame came back when the journal Science asked Mr. Alda to write an editorial about communicating science. His article began with the anecdote.
Then he thought, why not also create a contest where anyone — including scientists — could offer an explanation of a flame, and recruit 11-year-olds to judge which one is the best?
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